Largest archive of slavery lawsuits goes online
St Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project
http://stlcourtrecords.wustl.edu/resources.cfm
Copyright (c) 2003 - Associated Press
By JIM SALTER, Associated Press
ST. LOUIS (February 20, 2003 10:53 a.m. EST) - In 1819,
a black slave known only as Winny did something unusual:
She took her owners to a St. Louis court and argued that
she and her children should be free.
Winny contended that since she and her family had been
taken to a state where slavery was illegal before coming
to St. Louis, their continued slavery was illegal. A
jury agreed and the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the
verdict.
Winny's case is one of hundreds of lawsuits filed by
freedom-seeking slaves now available in an online
archive that offers a glimpse at what some believe is
the genesis of America's civil rights movement.
The archive was unveiled Wednesday during a news
conference at the Old Courthouse, where history's most
significant slavery lawsuit - the Dred Scott case -
initially was heard in 1846.
The St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project
consists of some 280 legal documents filed between 1814
and 1860. It includes images of original handwritten
documents in which black men, women and children
petitioned the courts for freedom.
"We are fortunate for this opportunity to recover vital
pieces of Missouri's black heritage from the circuit
court," Secretary of State Matt Blunt said. "The cases
inspire us and awe us, even as they shame us as we
question the morality of a free society denying basic
rights to a segment of its population."
Cases were allowed in St. Louis Circuit Court because a
Missouri law accommodated the pursuit of freedom under
certain circumstances. As early as 1807, a statute
stated that any person, black or white, held as a slave
could sue for freedom.
"St. Louis was an early hotbed for freedom suits because
of its geographic setting as a frontier crossroads and
its proximity to several free states and territories,
but similar suits also were being filed in state courts
across the nation," said David T. Konig, a history and
law professor at Washington University.
Konig said the archive will help researchers understand
the length of the struggle slaves faced, and the
historical significance of the lawsuits.
"These are the untold stories behind the nation's first
civil rights cases," Konig said.
The archive shows that Winny's case established
Missouri's judicial criteria for eligibility for
freedom: If a slave owner took a slave to free territory
like Illinois and established residence there, the slave
would be free.
Students from Saint Louis University, the University of
Missouri at St. Louis and Washington University are
working under the direction of the Missouri State
Archives to manage the archives. The records are
digitized by a team at Washington University.
Placement of the freedom lawsuits online is part of a
larger project involving 4 million pages of St. Louis
court records dating between 1804 and 1875.
In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court eventually
ruled against Scott, saying in a ruling that pushed the
country closer to Civil War that no blacks, free or
slave, could be U.S. citizens.
The Dred Scott suit was placed in the online archive in
January 2001, attracting nearly 1 million information
requests from visitors worldwide in its first year on
the Web, Washington University officials said.